For decades the words turn up only in isolated books. Then, in a 1999 argument between ordinary church members, they work as an everyday answer, and from about 2001 they never leave print again. This page follows that moment, and the wider change around it.
Measured, documented, interpreted. The curves are counts in Google Books and Google search. The events are dated, each with its source. The reading that connects them, precursors leading to a breakthrough, is an interpretation, and is labeled as one.
Earliest located, not proven first. February 4, 1999 is the earliest use of the exact words found in archive searches. An earlier one may yet turn up.
This page studies the phrase; it does not assert it.
FIG. 02 from precursors to takeoff, in order
Scroll down: the path draws as you read, from the first precursors to the takeoff.
The phases are this page’s reading of the record. Each event is dated and sourced on its own; that they form a path from precursors to a breakthrough is interpretation. The WWJD side of the story is on What Would Jesus Do.
FIG. 03 how the language changed, 1997 to 2010
FIG. 04 where it was argued: newsgroups by tradition, 1997 to 2010
Click any dot to read what was said, where and when.
Each row is a Usenet newsgroup named for a church or tradition. The groups were open to anyone, so a post in the Presbyterian group is not necessarily by a Presbyterian; what the rows show is that the argument was carried into each church’s own forum. A ringed dot is a cross-post: one thread sent to several groups at once, so the December 1997 thread appears in six rows; its six groups are those a participant listed when its replies were cross-posted, plus the copies found in the Adventist and Calvary Chapel groups. Filled dots were read in full from archive copies; hollow dots are known from search-index copies and are not yet read in full. The archives are incomplete: the raw files searched for 2003 to 2010 cover seven groups only, and 1990s coverage depends on what Google Groups and UsenetArchives kept. Absence from a cell is not evidence that the argument was absent there. The stages are this page’s reading of the language; each quotation is dated and sourced on its own.
The car, flight, the telegraph and the web each had decades of precursors, then a first working use, then continuous use within a year or two. Aligned on that first working use, the phrase follows the same pattern. Click any point for the detail.
FIG. 05 five transitions, each aligned on its first working use
Each row plots its latest precursor only; for the phrase that point stands for isolated books around 1916, 1967 and 1979. These are analogies of pattern, not causes. The milestones are this page’s choices and measure different things: passengers, a company, adults online, words in books. The Atlantic crossover is usually dated 1958; some sources give 1957 or 1960. The car’s crossover, cars outnumbering horses in New York City, rests on popular accounts that usually say 1912; some put it later in the decade.
The phrase’s own counts cannot show that the world around it changed. Two other records can: the words of the old norm and of the new, and what one confessional church’s members and clergy said in 1999 and 2010.
In May 1999 the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) surveyed its members, elders and ministers on keeping the Sabbath, and in February 2010 it asked again. Its Presbyterian Panel ran quarterly surveys from 1973 to 2017; these two are the only ones that name the Sabbath, never before 1999 and never after 2010. Its own Book of Confessions includes the Westminster Confession, which binds one day in seven. Choose a question.
Presbyterian Panel, May 1999: 565 members, 664 elders, 764 pastors and 359 specialized clergy returned the questionnaire (62% to 71%). Differences under 6 points are not meaningful. The survey was requested by the denomination’s Workgroup on Sabbath Keeping, and two questions carry its definition of Sabbath keeping as any time set aside to rest in God; the bars for those questions measure comfort with that framing. Figures are “very likely” plus “likely”, or “strongly agree” plus “agree”, from the report’s appendix.
How often it was asked: the Panel surveyed a fresh national sample every three years, sending questionnaires quarterly, from 1973 until Research Services ended it in 2017. In its published list of surveys by topic, the Sabbath appears only in May 1999 and February 2010. Earlier surveys on Sunday worship (1974, 1985) and on worship, work and leisure (1976) come nearest, but none names the Sabbath. The list gives topics, not every question asked. Source: Presbyterian Panel guide.
The Sabbath command is being handled differently from the rest of the Decalogue when its spiritual meaning is allowed to replace, rather than deepen, its literal behavioral form.
Books as listed in the footnotes of Carson’s 1982 introduction; the italic rows are the legal layer, which Carson does not discuss. That the books came in the same years the civil Sunday was being reargued is this page’s reading; it does not say one caused the other.
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